Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Desert Island Discs
Presented by Kirsty Young
A world-class writer and actress, known for winning Oscars and being both a star and relatable.
Eight records
CorassicFavourite
It's a piece called Corassic, which is the name of our house in Scotland... And when I turned fifty, he wrote this piece of music which is about the land surrounding our house.
Florence, It's a Lovely Morning
This is my dad, Eric, who wrote The Magic Roundabout... And losing him when he was fifty-two tore us to pieces. So dad's always been very close, very important part of our lives. And this is him talking and singing.
Choir of King's College, Cambridge, conducted by Sir David Willcocks
This is the point at which I have to say to Greg, my husband, to switch off the radio because he hates this so much... This is Christmas, really, and I'm not religious at all. Yet, this piece of music speaks to me about my childhood and the time before my father was ill.
Victor Hara, who's a Chilean freedom songwriter, was murdered. And in Tilemani, we're all musicians who all knew Victor Hara and were exiled from Chile for fifteen years... sitting there listening to these voices and the thrang of these guitars just fills you with courage.
this is Tom Waits and it's a song called Hold On and this is for Gaia. This is giving birth. I loved being pregnant. I was so happy.
Actually, this is Gregg's song. This is something that he um introduced me to that I loved immediately and continue to love fifteen years later... and it's it's groovy, groovy, jazzy, funky.
this song is about the fact that not everything you do will succeed, and that's okay.
With a Little Help from My Friends
This is Joe Cocker, and it's him singing at Woodstock with a little help from my friends... with Joe Cocker becomes this great cry of anguish. And I thought that would be a very good thing to have on the island, because at some point you're going to feel deep anguish, and this will express it
The keepsakes
The book
Homer
the Odyssey is good because, as well, it's about an exile. And I could learn Greek.
The luxury
a round, heavy bottomed cast iron saucepan with a removable handle
the thing I would miss most is cooking. So I want a saucepan.
In conversation
Presenter asks
How much do you try not to be preoccupied by how you look?
I try hard not to be. I do. And and indeed was n I don't think I am considered a beauty in that sense. I've always thought of myself as a character actress. So I'm in a sense I've got much less to lose.
Presenter asks
When did they tell you you were a mistake?
It was less hurtful than what they said about my first performance in the ballet when I came out as a a snowflake at the end of the line and and they both started to laugh because at the end of this line of lovely teeny wee gorgeous delicate things there was this great queen mother of a snowflake who was bossing everyone around. And I said, You mean you laugh? They told me that when I was nineteen and I remember feeling quite quite hurt.
Presenter asks
The recording
Timestamps play the recording from that turn
Presenter
Hello, I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Discs from BBC Radio 4. For rights reasons the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.
Presenter
For more information about the programme, please visit bbc.co.uk/slash radio four.
Presenter
My castaway this week is Emma Thompson.
Presenter
A study in overachievement, she is a world class writer and actress, who appears to have pulled off that rare trick of being both a star and one of us.
Presenter
Despite both her parents and her sister being in the business, theirs was not an actory home.
Presenter
We didn't perform at dinner, she says we just talked. It was a normal family in that sense. And these days she famously keeps her brace of Oscars in the downstairs loo, still lives across the road from her mum, and holidays in a wee cottage in Scotland, where she and her husband spend a third of the year, digging in like a pair of old potatoes, she says, whilst she basically grows a beard.
Presenter
Emma Thompson, it is uh basically grows a beard. It's very unusual to hear any woman admit to that, but certainly somebody who is uh a beauty and an actress and somebody who who trades to a large extent on the way that they look on screen. How much how much do you try not to be preoccupied by how you look?
Emma Thompson
I try hard not to be. I do. And and indeed was n I don't think I am considered a beauty in that sense. I've always thought of myself as a character actress. So I'm in a sense I've got much less to lose. Um the one of us thing
Presenter
Certainly the press and even some normal people in the public are suspicious of that because th they think that somebody who is as accomplished and as creative and is able to do all the things that the rest of us can't do can't be one of us, really.
Presenter
Uh
Emma Thompson
I think
Emma Thompson
That I
Emma Thompson
encountered the possibility earlier on, you know, when all the Oscar hoo ha was happening, of living in another way, shall we say. You know, people would say, Well, why don't you come out to Los Angeles and have your own company? and things like that. And I thought, but then who would I know?
Emma Thompson
Where would all my friends be? I have this habit of continuity and I love continuity and the continuum of life. Knowing people for a long, long, long time gives me great pleasure. And if you do that, of course, you haven't got any chance of changing because they'll be the first ones to turn round and say to you, What do you think you're doing? You're being an arse. You allowed to say arse on desert islands. You're an arse.
Presenter
You all asked.
Emma Thompson
Times have changed. I think it was John Ruskin said, he was talking about capitalism, and he said, you know, the acquisition of each new thing just engenders a new form of weariness. And I thought it was the most brilliant way of describing stuff, and the stuff that we accrete during our lifetimes. Greg and I certainly have got to the point where we say, Can we get rid of this? Yes, come on, let's chuck it. It's like you're going along in your boat and you just want to make it lighter so you can travel faster and you can go with the wind a wee bit more.
Speaker 1
So you've got
Emma Thompson
I remember going into Barbara Streisand's house once and she had she's got about fifteen homes and her rooms each room was done in a different style. Like there was a Japanese lacquered style and there was a Victorian bedroom. I mean we feel guilty about inhabiting two houses, one in London and one in Scotland, but we d do live in them. We really do live in them. The first track that you've tuned in.
Presenter
Uh
Emma Thompson
Yeah.
Presenter
Yeah.
Emma Thompson
D.
Presenter
Uh
Emma Thompson
It's a piece called Corassic, which is the name of our house in Scotland, which was bought for about three and six by my parents when I was fifteen years old.
Emma Thompson
And it's surrounded by a river and hills. And you know, I grew up there, and now my daughter and son are growing up there. And this piece of music was composed by the Scottish film composer Patrick Doyle, who I've known since I was twenty-three. He said tiny bee creature that talks very, very fast, very, very funny and completely mad. And had written music for loads of films that I've been in. He wrote for Ken's movies, for Much Ado, for Henry V and then for Sense and Sensibility and Annie McPhee. And when I turned fifty, he wrote this piece of music which is about the land surrounding our house.
Emma Thompson
Inspired by him walking along a little walk that Greg had built for my mum, so that my mum can always walk through the land so it's safe for her to walk'cause it's, you know, it's rocky and all of that, and which we called, laughingly, the P. Law Memorial Walk. She's very much alive, my mother, and probably listening as we speak. So, hello, mum, don't slip on an Argos catalogue or anything now. And he wrote this and presented it to me as we were roasting a large pig on my fiftieth birthday last year.
Presenter
The Hungarian Studio Orchestra and Corassic composed and conducted by Patrick Doyle. So Emma Thompson fifty, then you were fifty last year. The Roasted Pig was for that.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Emma Thompson
The roasted
Presenter
I read you were going to give yourself a year off. What happened to that then?
Emma Thompson
Well, um I am, but I'm going to do it next year. I just it took me a while to sort of slow everything down.
Emma Thompson
So next year the plan is to take a sort of sabbatical really of pretty much the whole year, but certainly the six months between February and August.
Presenter
Uh
Emma Thompson
Uh
Presenter
Uh
Presenter
So so the Scottish thing, tell me more about it. How and when did it begin?
Emma Thompson
Very early on. Absolutely. It began when I was three months old. My mum and dad, my mum's Gazwegian, and we were staying in a little boarding house in Strone on the shores of Loch Long. I mean, obviously, I can't remember this, but mum tells me the story. And we got to a beach where they found this little cottage that's built in 1720, this exquisite little pearl of a cottage. And there was a for-sale sign, and mum said, Oh, you know, wouldn't it be like they had no money at all? I mean, literally to the extent that dad had had to get help from equity because he was only 300 quid a year and it just couldn't do us. You know, I was a mistake, incidentally, because they didn't think they had enough money to start a family. When did they
Presenter
Tell you. I always wonder about people who find out they're a mistake. When did they tell you you were a mistake? I hope they waited until you were sort of over.
Emma Thompson
It was less hurtful than what they said about my first performance in the ballet when I came out as a a snowflake at the end of the line and and they both started to laugh because at the end of this line of lovely teeny wee gorgeous delicate things there was this great queen mother of a snowflake who was bossing everyone around. And I said, You mean you laugh? They told me that when I was nineteen and I remember feeling quite quite hurt. Anyway, my dad just rang my mum's family and said, Can I borrow three hundred quid, which is what it cost?
Emma Thompson
And what are your memories of those very early years of the Cottage on the Book.
Presenter
Uh
Emma Thompson
Just sheer bliss, because we lived in a wee flat in London which had no garden. And I can literally remember having dreams about Scotland and dreaming that I would be there and then waking up in London and being sad. For me as a child, Scotland was everything, everything. It was like a paradise to me.
Presenter
A good time for some music, then. Tell me about well, in fact, not quite music. Tell us what we're going to hear next.
Emma Thompson
Well This is my dad, Eric, who wrote The Magic Roundabout, and was very much known for that. And by the time he was my age he'd had a terrible stroke and couldn't speak any more. And I would at eighteen and nineteen, and my sister, we would help.
Emma Thompson
him to learn how to speak again, literally with cards. I am, he is, you. And it was very humiliating for this working class man who'd absolutely taught himself everything about language and who was passionate about the spoken word and spoke very well and with a beautiful voice. To have all that taken away from him at the age of 48 was really tough. And losing him when he was fifty-two tore us to pieces. So dad's always been very close, very important part of our lives. And this is him talking and singing.
Emma Thompson
In his capacity as the Magic Roundabout Man.
Speaker 4
Florence, it's a lovely morning.
Speaker 4
Florence, shall you work this morning?
Speaker 4
Florence, if you don't this morning.
Speaker 4
You will never do it, dear. Florence, you would rather wonder.
Speaker 4
Florence, it's a living wonder.
Speaker 4
That your house is not now under A great big cloud of dust, dust, dust. Clean it up, you must.
Presenter
That was your father, Eric Thompson, singing Florence, It's a Lovely Morning from the film version of the Magic Roundabout, Dougal and the Blue Cat. And that was recorded obviously before his illness and before s his speech was taken from him. So an important thing to have him in full sale.
Emma Thompson
Yeah.
Emma Thompson
Absolutely full seal. And that beautiful timbre to his voice. Um and he directed two plays before he died, one of which I was um I crewed on at the Royal Exchange in Manchester. And then he
Emma Thompson
just had a huge pulmonary embolism one morning when I was up in Manchester making sketch shows with Stephen and Hugh, and died and actually Hugh read um Hugh Laurie read a Magic Roundabout story at his funeral.
Emma Thompson
Which was so nice. Was he quite a sort of sharp, acerbic character? He wasn't. He could be. He was funny, and very witty people are often.
Presenter
It could
Emma Thompson
cruel as well, and he he knew that.
Emma Thompson
But very funny too. And you
Presenter
You said I mean your mother, of course, Philadelphia, the actress, you've said that it wasn't a an actory lovey household. I mean, you did you just sort of find performing by yourself, aside from obviously the incident of being the snowflake that didn't quite come off?
Emma Thompson
Yes, I think I did. It was all very accidental because I wasn't going to be an actress. I wasn't it didn't occur to me really. I mean, both my mum and I loved the thing we loved best was to make my father laugh, because he didn't laugh easily. And when he laughed, it was such a pleasure. And it's the same with Stephen. If I can make Stephen and you laugh now, I feel thrilled. And you referred to.
Presenter
to Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry, who were with you at university and in the Footlights at the same time. How did you migrate then from comedy into proper?
Emma Thompson
Um
Presenter
Acting.
Emma Thompson
And performing.
Emma Thompson
Because Robbie Coltrane was in Alfresco with us and they were casting Tucci Frutti and they said we need a girl to play kettles. And Robbie said, you know, you should see M. Let's have some more music. Tell me about your third disc. What are we going to hear? Oh, well, this is the point at which I have to say to Greg, my husband, to switch off the radio because he hates this so much. He's heard it so many times. It's Benjamin Britton's Ceremony of Carols. This is Christmas, really, and I'm not religious at all. Yet, this piece of music speaks to me about my childhood and the time before my father was ill. And Christmas time was the best.
Presenter
The opening of Benjamin Britton's A Ceremony of Carols sung by the choir of King's College, Cambridge, led by Sir David Wilcox. Greg, your husband can turn the radio safely back on. Emma Thompson. You're the only person ever to have won an Oscar for screenwriting and also have won an Oscar for acting. The only person.
Speaker 1
Mm-hmm.
Presenter
Does that mean that the industry in Hollywood is is.
Presenter
More scared of you than they would be.
Presenter
A normal actress, if you like, because you get it, you know the gig and you're you are in control and you're not dependent upon other people to deliver the scripts.
Emma Thompson
Uh
Presenter
I don't know.
Emma Thompson
Uh
Emma Thompson
They're very welcoming. They very keen on me to write, because of course good writing is hard to come by, and treat me well as a writer. And it's nice not to just be on the end of a phone waiting. So
Emma Thompson
I'm quite lucky, I think.
Presenter
Uh
Emma Thompson
Uh
Presenter
It it seems like quite a sort of seamless journey that you made from being a student to then being I mean, you wanna you won a bafta for Tooti Frutti, didn't you? Yes. Um to being this terrifically successful, bright young thing. You even had an agent at Cambridge. I mean, you were spotted and it was
Emma Thompson
Yes, that's right. Footlights was one of those hunting grounds, and we did all of our Sketch and Agent when I was about 19, I think.
Presenter
So we did
Emma Thompson
And he, Richard Armitage, was very good because he was the one who always said to me, You've got to do your own thing, you've got to do your own thing. He said, You wanted to write that comedy series, you've got that opportunity, you must do that. And I wrote a comedy series that was torn to shreds. I was just yes, because of
Presenter
I was just yes, I'm glad you bring that up. Because it almost seemed a point at which the press delighted in saying, Ah, yes, you think you're good, do you? Well, we'll we'll tear a strip right off you. I mean, it was very poorly received and a lot of the critics really laid into it.
Emma Thompson
Yeah, in in a very, very personal way as well. It was like a personal attack. Um, you can't do this, you shouldn't be doing this, you should never have been given the money, you are awful, awful, awful It was real hatred from a lot of journalists.
Presenter
Yeah.
Presenter
And did you uh did you think about chucking it in? Did you think
Emma Thompson
No, I just thought, well, maybe I should act. Right. I mean, the option was there, you see, because I think that was part of the problem. I'd won the BAFTA for Tootie Fruity and Fortunes of War. It was for both of those things. So I had been recognised, if you like, for serious acting, and now I dared to try my hand at comedy, which is what I'd always intended to do. Yet it's the reason I got to write Sense and Sensibility, because Lindsay Durand watched this show, which was put out in America at about three o'clock in the morning, you know. And she happened to see it and said, I like that sketch. I think I'm going to ask this woman to try because she seems to be able to write in a vernacular that could be Austinian, but she's also funny. And that's why I got that job. Let's have some music then. What's next?
Emma Thompson
Oh now this is in Tilemane.
Emma Thompson
In nineteen seventy three when the coup happened.
Emma Thompson
In Chile. Victor Hara, who's a Chilean freedom songwriter, was murdered. And in Tilemani,
Emma Thompson
We're all musicians who all knew Victor Jara and were exiled from Chile for fifteen years and went all around the world playing their charangas and the Chilean instruments, but also learning instruments from other parts of the world and sitting there listening to these voices and the thrang of these guitars just fills you with courage.
Speaker 4
Asaldrar recovered.
Speaker 4
Hail God bless him.
Speaker 4
Hey for the blessing.
Speaker 4
Candido y vera turabia, candido tubie caperausala, para reverti tulo bregavina delazaro, candidos contantes perans, agnos mica, meni porcarvin, eli.
Presenter
Inti Ilemani and Candidos. You're never afraid uh to step out of the box of of being the actress and the writer. You you put yourself on the line a lot for causes that you believe in, and it attracts a lot of derision. Do you do you mind the derision?
Emma Thompson
No.
Emma Thompson
Not at all.
Emma Thompson
Because there's a voice there that I can use. If I use it properly, then it doesn't matter what anybody says. I think if you're derided because you're speaking in an area that you don't fully understand, then it probably would hurt, because you would know fine well that you've been speaking somehow out of turn.
Presenter
Uh
Emma Thompson
Okay.
Presenter
I want to talk to you about a period in your life between nineteen ninety one.
Presenter
and ninety six. When, by my calculation, you starred in seven films, you were nominated for five Oscars, of which you won two, and you were also divorced. How on earth did you stay sane in that period?
Emma Thompson
I don't think I did stay sane.
Emma Thompson
Actually.
Emma Thompson
It was tough.
Emma Thompson
I think I probably should have sought professional help long before I actually did. For all sorts of reasons. Yes, divorce, ghastly painful business, but also fame, in some ways ghastly painful business as well. You become.
Emma Thompson
Slightly more
Emma Thompson
Public property in a way that's not necessarily always comfortable.
Presenter
When you fell off the edge, where did you go? I mean, was it a proper full-on can't answer the phone, can't change my clothes, can't see my friends? What happened?
Emma Thompson
Well, I think my first bout of that was when I was doing Me and My Girl, funnily enough, um, when I really didn't change my clothes and couldn't answer the phone and was but went into the theatre every night and was cheerful and sang the Lambeth Walk. But I think I was m my first bout was on actual clinical depression. And that's very much the theatre when my dad died. My mum was in a farce and went onstage. You know, the day he died she was on stage playing in a farce.
Emma Thompson
So that's what actors do.
Emma Thompson
And then, in a sense, I suppose work did save me. And then Gregg saved me, because he picked up the pieces and put them back together again, you know, after sense and sensibility.
Presenter
And i is it the case that a can I use the word a witch? I don't know, a soothsayer. Somebody said to Gregg Wise, now your husband of a good many years, that he was going to meet the woman that he would his future wife, the woman he would marry, on the on the set of sense and sentiment.
Emma Thompson
Yeah, on the set of Sense and Sensitive. And of course I was married, so he thought it was Winslet and courted her assiduously. I remember him taking her to Glastonbury, which she hated because it was all hippy-ish and Greg's quite hippy-ish, you know. And he kept on thinking, This just isn't working. I think she's just got to be wrong. It's a friend. It was just a friend of his who's quite sort of witchy. And it turned out to be me.
Presenter
And you were s you were still married, as you say. Did you know you soon would not be married?
Emma Thompson
Well, I was very not married actually, pretty much, by then. It was all in flames, and had been for a while.
Presenter
Yeah.
Presenter
And was that anything to do with the amount of work that you and Kenneth Brennan had done together? I mean, you did a lot of very well received work together.
Emma Thompson
No, I think we enjoyed that time. I mean, I think at the end of Much Ado, I think that was I mean, I loved that time. I think Ken found it very difficult, but I loved it. And then it was it started to fracture
Presenter
Sure.
Emma Thompson
Yeah.
Emma Thompson
Uh
Presenter
And so writing then, writing sense and sensibility, writing about the importance of love and the difficulties of love and the complexities of the most intimate of human relations was that too easy probably to say it was cathartic. Was it useful?
Emma Thompson
I think so, very much so. I can remember
Emma Thompson
Actually, I can remember
Emma Thompson
The only thing I could do was write. In the not being able to get dressed.
Emma Thompson
Um Ken had an old black cashmere dressing gown I'd given him one Christmas.
Emma Thompson
and the bathroom and and he was gone, he wasn't living at home and I used to just put it on
Emma Thompson
and crawl from the bedroom to the computer and just sit and write. And then I was all right,'cause I was not present. And sense and sensibility s really saved me from, I think, going under in a very nasty way.
Presenter
Let's have some music. What are we gonna hear now?
Emma Thompson
This disk number f
Presenter
But
Emma Thompson
Okay, this is Tom Waits and it's a song called Hold On and this is for Gaia. This is giving birth. I loved being pregnant. I was so happy. I was just happier than I'd ever been and I loved getting bigger and feeling her sloshing around and doing summer sorts and stuff. It was just the best thing. And then giving birth.
Emma Thompson
to fling your head back and let out this kind of leonine roar, and this child to come shooting out of your body in a great pile of stuff and blood, and the smell and the the the experience of it was beyond anything I could have imagined.
Speaker 4
They hold the sign up in our town.
Speaker 4
If you live it up, you won't live it down.
Speaker 4
So she left Marli Rio's son.
Speaker 4
Just like a bullet leaves a gun.
Presenter
That was Tom Waits, and hold on. Can we talk then about the dastardly Mr Willoughby, who turned out not to be so dastardly after all? Uh your husband now, Greg Weiss, who you met, as you say, on sense and sensibility.
Emma Thompson
Yeah.
Emma Thompson
Yeah.
Speaker 4
Yeah.
Presenter
I don't know if it's indelicate, but can we talk about just how handsome he is?
Emma Thompson
No, it's not indelicate. He is really beautiful and waking up and seeing that person every day is I mean, I can't deny it. It's a great aesthetic pleasure. So yeah, it's just great, actually.
Presenter
And i it is often the case that people who are physically perfect don't feel that they have to develop much of a character. I suppose you're gonna tell me now he's got a great personality as well.
Emma Thompson
No.
Emma Thompson
No, no personality at all.
Emma Thompson
Yes, he's um very eccentric because he doesn't think of himself as beautiful.
Emma Thompson
is absolutely happiest on the land in Scotland or in his barn building things, and has changed all our lives in Scotland by introducing a Finnish sauna to the uh
Emma Thompson
The land you
Presenter
You'd spoken to journalists.
Presenter
Before about wanting to be a parent, and then you'd spoken about the fact that you had miscarried. There is nothing more private than that. And yet you had put it out there.
Emma Thompson
Thank you.
Emma Thompson
Yeah.
Emma Thompson
Yes, I n don't mind that. Do you not? Not really, no. I mean, um
Emma Thompson
I I think that that in relation to miscarriage and IVF and all of those subjects, I think it's very helpful for people like me to talk about that because an awful lot of women go through that and they think that it's only them and it's only them that feel awful about
Emma Thompson
you know, having had difficulties and
Emma Thompson
Failing to produce children and feeling that as a terrible failure, which is so wrong.
Emma Thompson
I feel close to other people.
Emma Thompson
I feel like them.
Emma Thompson
But I think again it's part of the activist in me that says, yes, it's fine to talk about that because it's a shared problem somehow. Let's have some music then. What's next?
Emma Thompson
Actually, this is Gregg's song. This is something that he um introduced me to that I loved immediately and continue to love fifteen years later. Um I can't believe it's fifteen years. Oh my gosh. Um and this is Us Three and it's the Cantaloupe Fantasia and it's it's groovy, groovy, jazzy, funky.
Speaker 4
What's that?
Speaker 4
Uh
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 1
Wait, wait a minute.
Speaker 1
Goovy, groovy, jazzy, funky, pounce, bounce, dance, as me, dip in the melodic C. Rhythm keeps flowing, it drips to MC. Sweet sugar pop, sugar pop, rocks and pop. You don't stop till the sweet beat drops. I shall improve as I stick and move. Vivid poems recited on top of the groove. Smooth, mind, floating like a butterfly, no instead of loadin'. Sung like a lullaby, brace yourself as the beat hits ya. Dip, drip, dip, damn.
Presenter
That was us three featuring Rasan and Cantaloupe. You've referred uh to your two children, and we know about Guyan, we know about the IVF. Tell me about Tindi, because that is um a very different story.
Emma Thompson
And
Speaker 1
Uh
Emma Thompson
Hmm.
Emma Thompson
Yes. Well, I support an organization called the Refugee Council who offer help to refugees in this country. And in fact, um
Emma Thompson
When Tindy arrived in this country, he spent the first two nights sleeping rough in Trafalgar Square, which is inconceivable somehow. This little sixteen-year-old, which he was at the time, having come from a truly appalling story, his very difficult, which I won't go into because I think that's his story to tell, not mine. But I met him at a Christmas party that we'd give once a year, and this relationship started to develop not just with me but with Greg, with Gaia, who was two at the time, my mum, and he
Emma Thompson
Became, as it were, an organic sense, part of our family within that year. And then it continued the story because.
Emma Thompson
The Home Office, in all its wisdom, not, after five years decided to challenge his leave to remain, so we had to go to court. So you consider that in relation to someone who has had a terribly difficult time anyway and has lost his family, the sense of being suspected of something is very strong.
Presenter
And from arriving and sleeping on the streets of London at sixteen, I understand precisely what you say about respecting his privacy and that this is his story, but just to understand the journey that he has made, he is he is still studying or he's finished studying?
Emma Thompson
Yeah.
Emma Thompson
P.
Presenter
A
Emma Thompson
He decided to do an MA in human rights law, which he's doing now this year at SOAS at the School of Oriental and African Studies. And this is a boy who arrived with really no English at all, and at twenty three is about to get his MA in human rights law. He's extraordinary.
Presenter
Is he Gaia's brother? Yes, oh absolutely.
Emma Thompson
Yes, oh absolutely. Absolutely. Guy's so thrilled about it. Because of course she was two when he turned up. She's ten now. He's been a part of her life forever. And they have a very brotherly, sisterly relationship as well. And it's fantastic to see. We're very, very lucky. Very lucky. Sometimes I think as well, you know, if I had had my other IVFs had worked and I'd had more children, perhaps there wouldn't have been room for this young man who has changed our lives so much and who we all love so much. Let's have disc number seven now. Tell me what it is, Emma. Well, this is my brother-in-law, Richard Lumston, who is a musician, amongst other things. He's also a wonderful actor. I was in San Francisco doing Junior with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito and having a fun time. What's Arnold Schwarzenegger like? Well, he's orange, rather oldy-worldy.
Emma Thompson
Prussian, she almost expected him to click his heels and very humble about the fact that he wasn't an actor. You know, I'm not an actor, you must tell me what to do. I am in your hands. Lots of loud laughing. So, there I was in San Francisco with Arnold, and my sister sent me this tape and said, I've met this man and I think he's something special to me. So, here's his music. And I loved his music. I played this tape the whole time at a time when I was actually very unhappy because it was, you know, I was 35 and it was absolute curtains for my marriage with Ken, and I was not in a good state. And this tape that Soph sent was incredibly helpful to me. So, this song is about the fact that not everything you do will succeed, and that's okay.
Speaker 4
Some of your planes will come down.
Speaker 4
Some of your rain.
Speaker 4
Well for
Speaker 4
Some of your fires won't burn
Presenter
That was your brother in law, Richard Lumsden, and some of your planes. You've spoken about a life that seems very rich and very together, especially when you speak about your time with all of your extended family up in Scotland, and you're doing work that is well appreciated and highly regarded.
Presenter
And I'm going to send you to an island. How on earth are you going to cope on the island without any of that?
Emma Thompson
Uh Well, it's not going to be easy, but I think that I will tell stories. I will
Emma Thompson
probably create a mythology quite quickly and on purpose and start to see if I can't tame a seagull or something. I'll have to make relationships with the island, within the island, and then within those relationships tell stories. I think that's how I'll survive it, is by creating stories.
Presenter
I thought maybe it was it was too obvious a question to ask, but I'm wondering of of those Academy Awards which one meant meant the most to you? I mean i is it the t the telling of stories and the language that is more important than the acting?
Emma Thompson
Yes, I think it is, because it's harder. I'm not saying that acting isn't hard, it's it depends. I find it joyous and um life giving and fun, even if it's traumatic. Um an escape from myself, which I I'm ashamed to say I enjoy very much.
Emma Thompson
What are you escaping? Oh, you know me, me. The voices in my head, the the constant must do better, must try harder, plus you're too fat, and you're not very you know, really very good mother and that that punitive conscience is part of my psychiatric problem. Not
Presenter
Put too fine a point on it, listeners. And as a loved daughter, where did that come from? Where did the not good enough come from? Where's that voice originating?
Emma Thompson
I don't know.
Emma Thompson
I mean, I think that mum and dad both came from the post war
Emma Thompson
Semi-puritanical upbringings. I mean, my mum's Scottish, so the Presbyterian thing is strong within us. The force is strong. I think it was a creation of my own making and was always there. Something to do with justice, and I couldn't cope with suffering of any kind. I had to put it right somehow. And of course, that's very arrogant to think that you can.
Emma Thompson
Alleviate the world's suffering. You can't. And so w one of the most important things for me to learn over this life that I've had is that I can't save the world. I can do what I can do, and that has to be enough. In the same way as clever people say, You're a good enough mother, that has to be enough. It's just the way I am. It's never quite enough. Your final piece of music then, Emma Thompson, is what?
Emma Thompson
Well, oddly appropriate, really.
Emma Thompson
This is Joe Cocker, and it's him singing at Woodstock with a little help from my friends, which is quite a sort of upbeat number with the Beatles, but with Joe Cocker becomes this great cry of anguish. And I thought that would be a very good thing to have on the island, because at some point you're going to feel deep anguish, and this will express it, I think, very well, and I might be able to join in. So that's for the dark times.
Speaker 4
Don't you know I'm on the bank with my friends?
Speaker 4
I promised myself I'd get back.
Speaker 4
Set up all the time with two
Presenter
Joe Cocker and with a little help from my friends.
Presenter
So, Emma, we come to the moment then where I will give you the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare. Lovely. And.
Emma Thompson
Another book you're choosing? Yes. Well, this was hard as you can imagine. Yes. But I finally plumped for Homer's Odyssey. I mean, I was talking about the mythology of the island. And I thought, well, Homer will help, of course, because he wrote some of the greatest myths ever. And I loved the Greek myths. I've always loved them. I loved them when I was a little girl. So I thought, well, the Odyssey is good because, as well, it's about an exile.
Emma Thompson
And I could learn Greek. Because I'd have both the English and the Greek. It's yours. And a luxury as well. I know that the thing I would miss most is cooking. So I want a saucepan. I've got it at home. I would bring it with me. You don't have to buy it for me. It's um a round, heavy bottomed cast iron saucepan with a removable handle. So, mmm. So, you see,'cause otherwise the handle gets too hot and you can't stir anything or take it off the heat. Um because there's nothing on the island you can cook in, you see. So if I have a pot, then one of the first things I can do is go around testing veg and seeing if there's anything herbal I can make something different with and start creating an island cuisine.
Presenter
Coming.
Speaker 1
Oh.
Presenter
Yeah. The special cooking pot is yours, and if you had to choose just one to save one of these uh eight discs, which one would you choose to save?
Emma Thompson
Um I'd save Karassic, Pat's music, because it's so personal. I'd find that very inspiring. Emma Thompson, thank you very much.
Presenter
For letting us hear your desert island discs, you're welcome.
Presenter
You've been listening to a download from the BBC. You'll find more information on the Radio Four website bbc. co dot uk slash radio four.
How on earth did you stay sane in that period [between 1991 and 1996]?
I don't think I did stay sane. Actually. It was tough. I think I probably should have sought professional help long before I actually did. For all sorts of reasons. Yes, divorce, ghastly painful business, but also fame, in some ways ghastly painful business as well.
Presenter asks
When you fell off the edge, where did you go?
Well, I think my first bout of that was when I was doing Me and My Girl, funnily enough, um, when I really didn't change my clothes and couldn't answer the phone and was but went into the theatre every night and was cheerful and sang the Lambeth Walk. But I think I was m my first bout was on actual clinical depression. And that's very much the theatre when my dad died... And then, in a sense, I suppose work did save me. And then Gregg saved me, because he picked up the pieces and put them back together again, you know, after sense and sensibility.
Presenter asks
Where did the not good enough come from? Where's that voice originating?
I don't know. I mean, I think that mum and dad both came from the post war Semi-puritanical upbringings. I mean, my mum's Scottish, so the Presbyterian thing is strong within us... I think it was a creation of my own making and was always there. Something to do with justice, and I couldn't cope with suffering of any kind. I had to put it right somehow. And of course, that's very arrogant to think that you can. Alleviate the world's suffering. You can't.
“Knowing people for a long, long, long time gives me great pleasure. And if you do that, of course, you haven't got any chance of changing because they'll be the first ones to turn round and say to you, What do you think you're doing? You're being an arse.”
“I think it was John Ruskin said, he was talking about capitalism, and he said, you know, the acquisition of each new thing just engenders a new form of weariness. And I thought it was the most brilliant way of describing stuff, and the stuff that we accrete during our lifetimes. Greg and I certainly have got to the point where we say, Can we get rid of this? Yes, come on, let's chuck it. It's like you're going along in your boat and you just want to make it lighter so you can travel faster and you can go with the wind a wee bit more.”
“I think that in relation to miscarriage and IVF and all of those subjects, I think it's very helpful for people like me to talk about that because an awful lot of women go through that and they think that it's only them and it's only them that feel awful about you know, having had difficulties and failing to produce children and feeling that as a terrible failure, which is so wrong.”